Google to scrap ‘parasite SEO’ penalties in Europe to head off DMA fine

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has announced that it will end manual search penalties under its “parasite SEO” rules throughout Europe on August 30. 

The announcement is supposed to put an end to a European Commission inquiry that threatened Google with a fine of almost 10% of Google’s global revenue.

Manual demotions come to a halt throughout the EEA on August 30

The change may only apply to the EEA, but it is definite. Google will no longer allow manual search demotions for sites that flout its site reputation abuse policy in the 30 countries that are in the European Economic Area. 

The rule kicks in from August 30, 2026. This will not apply to countries outside the EEA.

The policy in question is focused on parasite SEO or “site reputation abuse.” Under that setup, a third party has to put up some money to get its material published on a well-known website in order to take advantage of the host’s high search rankings. 

Google considers this to be spam, as readers, as well as its ranking systems, will think they are looking at content belonging to the host rather than a tenant.

Why Google set up a site reputation rule

Google has come out to explain why it implemented the rule. On November 13, 2025, Pandu Nayak, who serves as Search chief scientist, referred to the European Commission’s inquiry as “misguided” on the company’s blog. 

He continued by saying the inquiry would pose great harm to the millions of European users and stated that Google had released an update to its anti-spam regulation since March 2024. The March 2024 update was done on the basis of one principle: a site cannot pay or use deceptive tactics to boost its ranking. 

Nayak went on to reference a court in Germany that had dismissed a similar complaint, ruling that the “site reputation rule” was not just valid but was consistent in its application

He gave examples without mincing words: a payday loan operator or a weight-loss pill seller paying host links and low-quality pages on a high-ranking site. Nayak argued that if such a practice were unattended to, bad actors would grow past other sites that deliver quality content  

Why did the Commission open an inquiry?

European regulators view things through a different lens. Officials were spooked when market monitoring showed Google was demoting sites of reputable news outlets and publishers whenever those sites had sponsored posts on them. 

The Commission chose to react and opened a formal inquiry into Google’s actions under the Digital Markets Act.

The Digital Markets Act was passed to curb the excesses of Big Tech companies. Companies that run afoul of the DMA can receive a fine of up to 10% of their worldwide revenue. 

The suspension of manual demotions for countries in the EEA buys Google time so it can answer to the Commission’s inquiry, without ending the policy on a global level

Small part of a larger EU squeeze on Google 

The suspension of the policy in the EEA comes amid a larger focus on Google by folks in Brussels. The EU fined Google 890 million Euros on July 23, 2026, for diverting Google Play users and Chrome users towards Google’s own services. That was the largest fine in the history of the DMA, way above the fines levied on Meta and Apple in 2025, to the tune of 200 and 500 million euros, respectively.

In September last year, the EU fined Google 2.95 billion euros as an adtech penalty. 

The EU also fined Google 8.2 billion euros between the years 2017 and 2019 under previous antitrust rules. It remains to be seen whether the suspension of the policy would appease those in Brussels.